My Story
As a baby boomer born in the northeast U.S., I was taught that history had ended. Our teachers in elementary school taught us that the United States was the greatest nation that ever existed. We were the richest nation, we were the smartest nation, we were the most powerful nation, we were the most moral nation, and every other nation in the world deferred to our leadership. (Except of course for the communists)
There would never be a reason for change, because in fact we had reached utopia. Reaching utopia had been a dramatic story. As a nation we’d gone through the winter in Valley Forge, the Civil War to free the slaves, the Great Depression where all our relatives had become poor, the attack on Pearl Harbor by the dastardly fascists, the middle class revival after the war, and now a state of permanent prosperity and contentment. (Albeit somewhat marred by the presence of the misguided red Russians and Chinese)
I attended a small liberal arts college in the Midwest, Antioch College. Antioch’s philosophy of higher education involved going off to work for half the year. The highlight of this period was an off campus residential experience under the mentorship of Robert Theobald, a leading futurist. My higher education complete (I thought) after obtaining a bachelor’s degree in education from Antioch and receiving a master’s degree in urban planning from a large northeast university, I headed into the job market.
Even though somewhat disillusioned by the Vietnam War, I still believed in the concepts of the New Deal, the New Frontier, and the Great Society. Therefore it made sense for me to go into government work. I soon found that government had lost its taste for innovation and leading social change. I found myself as a manager when I really wanted to be an innovator and entrepreneur. Unfortunately I did not know this.
Over the years, I had the chance to design several innovative projects. None of the more innovative projects were implemented. At some point, I had the nagging thought that what I really wanted to be was a futurist like Robert Theobald. But all of my family training pointed me in the direction of remaining in a safe managerial position.
In the early nineteen nineties I was one of the leaders of a state run project to develop community group homes for the mentally ill. Unfortunately the economy in New England where I worked went into the dumper and the whole project was canceled. I found myself working at the Multiservice Center for the Homeless in Cambridge Massachusetts. I experienced a milieu of hope, desperation, and intensive though often unsuccessful effort to help these homeless people. I realized the government did not seem to have the tools or the will to help much. I began looking around for other models and soon found that there were organizations, later, to be called “social enterprises” that seemed to have better helping models. Instead of giving people a bowl of soup or a cot in a shelter, they gave them job training, subsidized housing, counseling, mentorship, peer support and other tools that allowed them to actually turn their lives around.
My career in government led me to Seattle, where I administered funds for low income housing. As the project manager for converting part of the navy base into housing for the homeless, I was concerned that the future residents of the base would have opportunities for job training as well as pre-employment or supported employment opportunities. I obtained a large grant for this purpose, including mini-business incubation, from the Federal government, which unfortunately disappeared when the Republicans took over control of Congress. Eventually I transferred into another office which allowed me more latitude to develop innovative projects. Organizing a group of like-minded individuals in the area, we in short order developed a social enterprise expo or trade show, a conference on new empowering forms of philanthropy and entrepreneurship, and the first social venture fairs in the U.S.
I also found that there were people within government and the third sector that did not like these new ideas and who managed to bring the project to a premature end. My next position was doing business development for a large nonprofit that served disabled people and had a reputation as a social enterprise. The former CEO of the organization was known as an innovator and leader in the social enterprise movement. He was succeeded by a CEO from the corporate world. The board believed that the second generation CEO should be a manager rather than an innovator or an entrepreneur. The skills of the corporate manager often do not include that of fostering cooperative effort and innovation. There was a need to design new programs for aging disabled workers. The new CEO was not interested in supporting this effort. He concentrated on the skills he brought from the corporate world, maximizing the fiscal bottom line, controlling the staff, and cultivating a compliant board. The lesson I learned was: A social enterprise needs a manager who is proficient at maximizing the “double bottom line”, the mission and the money.
Today as a doctoral student studying social entrepreneurship and leadership and actively involved in academic efforts to develop social entrepreneurship curriculum, I feel I am finally fulfilling my destiny as an entrepreneur and a futurist. While I was told in government not to be such a “big picture” person and to “stay on my own turf”, my new career requires me to look at the big picture and be interdisciplinary. The big picture is an exciting one. In a time of accelerated technological change, is it possible that social change will catch up? And if it doesn’t, will society continue to go forward or will it collapse?